Spring Championship of Online Poker Seeing Huge Numbers so Far

Published on April 4th, 2009 5:23 am EST

The SCOOP (Spring Championship of Online Poker) series at Pokerstars has already proven to be a huge hit with players, with a number of the tournaments absolutely smashing the guaranteed prize amounts.

With the exception of the "Medium" and "High" buy-in PL 5-Card Draw events (which are never that popular with players), the events in the SCOOP series so far have had prize pools that have easily topped the guarantees from Pokerstars.

Event #1, which took place yesterday, was the 6-Max No Limit Hold'em with Rebuys events.

The "Low" tournament in Event #1 had a ridiculously low guarantee of $50,000 in prize money - the final prize pool came in at a staggering $435k after 27,134 people decided to enter.

The "Medium" and "High" tournaments in Event #1 both smashed their guarantees as well - the "Medium" event had a final prize pool of $641,350 (with a guarantee of $200,000), while the "High" event had a final prize pool of over $1.1 million dollars (with a guarantee of $500,000).

The "Medium" tournament in Event #1, which was ultimately won by "WestmenloAA", had a first place prize that was nearly half of the total guaranteed prize pool.

Event #2, which was the PL Omaha Hi/Lo event, featured three tournaments that all easily topped their guarantees as well.

The "Low" tournament had a total prize pool of $76,220, which was more than triple the guaranteed prize money in the tournament ($25,000).

The "Medium" tournament had guaranteed prize money of $50,000, and ended up with a total prize pool of over $200,000. The "High" tournament easily topped the guarantee as well ($327,000 vs $200,000).

Event #3, which was PL 5-Card Draw, saw two of its tournaments miss the guarantee.

The "Low" event easily topped the guarantee, coming in at $42,920 in prize money vs a guarantee of $25,000.

The "Medium" and "High" events both missed however, with the $1,050 "High" event seeing only 120 entrants (200 would have been needed in order to meet the guarantee).

This is not all that surprising however - these events, as mentioned, are never very popular with players, as many people just don't play this type of poker.

The "Low" tournament saw a total prize pool of $335,580, which easily surpassed the $100k guarantee.

The "Medium" tournament saw a total prize pool of $656,100, which easily surpassed the $300,000 guarantee.

The "High" tournament saw a total prize pool of $1.25 million dollars, which easily surpassed the $1 million dollar Guarantee.

The PLO and 2-Day No Limit Hold'em events should prove to be very popular with players this weekend, and I would expect that both will smash their guarantees as well.

So far, so good for Pokerstars and their new SCOOP series. This was clearly a very savvy business move for the company, and I wouldn't be surprised to see dramatically increased guarantees for next year.